Shanty Stash - 1950 Oldsmobile 88 Futuramic

from Hemmings Classic Car

A quiet history radiates from Joe Blair's Oldsmobile. It wasn't Frank Sinatra's ride of choice to Melvyn's in Palm Springs; it didn't carry Harry Truman away after an assassination attempt or tow Briggs Cunningham's race car to Sebring. It's not a famous history, one that anyone would recognize, but it's there. You can instantly feel the trips it has taken; the thousands of gallons of gas converted by the Rocket V-8 into reciprocating power; the groceries hauled in the back; the lives that have been lived in it. America used to move its families in a million wagons like this; most were used up and mourned in the passing only by the children who sat in the back and later watched their beloved car drive away down the street with a new owner. The parents were happy to move on and the used car would never be loved like that again.
As so many others did, the Morgan family in Princeton, New Jersey, bought a big station wagon in 1950 to move their family; unlike most, it was a six-passenger Oldsmobile 88 Futuramic, a car that in its 1949-'50 run sold a grand total of 3,737 units. That's not entirely surprising when you consider it was the second most expensive car in the lineup, with a $2,585 sticker price that was only $30 less than the top convertible 98 model.
It's easy to see why someone would want one, though. It had the fantastic 303.7-cu.in. Rocket V-8 and, at 205 inches long, you could outfit a Boy Scout troop for a week and still see out the back. The rear seat flips and folds to make one long cargo area and the rear clamshell doors give you easy access to all that space. And, of course, it has that great 1949-'50 Oldsmobile styling, stretched way out with painted metal woodgrain trim. Plus there's real wood inside, below the front windows.
Diana Morgan Olcott, who was a teenager when her father bought the car, took it over years later and kept it in daily use until she bought a Chrysler 300 convertible in the mid-Sixties. Then, the Olds became the one she'd take whenever there was something dirty, heavy or bulky to move. When she and her husband retired to Manchester, Vermont, in the early Eighties, it helped them relocate. But when her husband died a few years later, she took the Olds off the road and continued to use the Chrysler, which she still owns.
Since the Olds wagon was going into indefinite storage, it needed to have its own space. Laying plywood on the ground, they rolled the car on top, put it on blocks, "and then they built a shanty around the car," said current owner Joe. "I'm serious! It was chicken wire from head to toe, so it was basically a wall of wire." They took blue and green plastic tarps and hung them on the inside of the chicken wire. "They built a little garage just for the car," reported Joe. And there it rested for the next 19 years.
In the spring of 2007, Joe's tree service was pruning maples on Miss Diana's property. He spotted the funny little shack out back and thought it was just about the right size for a car: "We stuck our fingers through the chicken wire and pulled the tarp back, and saw the 88 emblem on the rear fender," he said. Joe didn't know exactly what it was, other than an Oldsmobile, so that was his first question. "She told me the whole story," he said. Her caretaker told him that originally, one of Miss Diana's daughters had said she wanted the car, but she'd never followed up. He thought they needed to do something about it, because the plywood was rotting and the car was sinking into the ground. "It was time to get it out of there before things got worse," said Joe.
Miss Diana's daughter had come up with some values online, which didn't really reflect the reality of a car stored for two decades. An auctioneer/appraiser in town, who was also a car buff, came up with a more realistic $6,000 figure--and made her an offer on the car. She came back to Joe, and after trading for some of the tree work, he took it home.
Joe was happy to find a container of Marvel Mystery Oil on the front seat; they'd poured it into the cylinders back in the Eighties, and the windows had been left slightly open to let air in. He unloaded a back full of wicker furniture and hauled it out. "Unfortunately, the house is in what they call Glebe Swamp...in fact, I had to get the car out of there at the end of March while the ground was still frozen," Joe said. "It was far from being dry. Mice got into the headliner a little bit, and obviously they tore a lot of the stuffing out of the seats. And I had to clean the mouse debris out of the horn to get it to work."
When Joe brought the Olds home, though, he discovered the engine wasn't frozen and did a tune-up with new points, plugs and wires. His biggest surprise was that they'd converted it to a double-battery system, one 12-volt on the left and one on the right. After that, it only took an hour and a half to get the engine running, with help from local mechanic Tom Petry and his son. "We hopped in it and drove it around the field for about an hour--with no brakes. We just kept hooting and hollering because the thing was running."
While cleaning the Olds up, Joe drove it for the remainder of the summer; it was distinctive not only for its size and color, but also for the big cloud of smoke that followed him. With 114,000 miles on the car in 2007, Joe recalled: "There was so much buildup from the old non-detergent oil, I'm kind of amazed that it actually ran."
Tom rebuilt the engine from the bottom end up over the winter. The common Rocket V-8 made it possible to use a large proportion of NOS parts in the rebuild. It cranked over and started easily in very hot weather and accelerated, cornered and braked surprisingly well.
A big, obscure early Fifties wagon is not everyone's first choice in a collector car, but Joe's life has been full of big Oldsmobiles. "When I grew up, my grandfather had one model 88 after another." Every car as long as he could remember was an Olds. The woody was a car he'd heard about, but never seen and, coming from a big family himself, he immediately understood what it was all about.
There are few surviving Oldsmobile woody wagons today--Fusick Automotive Products has shown one on the cover of their catalog, and a restored 1949 model 78 sold at one of the Amelia Island auctions this year, but Joe's never seen another in person. When he called Fusick's to ask some questions, they found their restored car differed from Joe's unrestored car in some details. If he decides to do more serious work, Joe will document the car thoroughly beforehand for posterity. If there are other similar Olds woody wagons still in stock configuration, Joe would like to hear about them. "I'm sure they're out there, but some of the few that I've seen have been turned into street rods," he said.
Each year since he's owned it, Joe has gradually improved the car. He's had to replace the cloth-covered wiring, as well as suspension bushings. The Hydra-Matic transmission clunks heavily when you engage it, even more so than they typically do. As long as it clunks and goes forward, though, he isn't planning on touching it. Joe told us: "I think this year I'm going to replace the shocks, and then I want to recover the front seat and contemplate the back seat at the same time. But half the people who look at it say leave it alone; the other half say spend $100,000 and restore it, which obviously I'm not going to do."
"At this point in my life, I don't need to sell it, and I'll never find another," Joe said. "There were eight kids in my family, so I grew up in station wagons. It's just funny that I ended up buying one that was right nearby."

This article originally appeared in the November, 2012 issue of Hemmings Classic Car.